Costume Designer

A Costume Designer designs and provides all the costumes for the Actors worn in the show. We work very closely with Actors and with production–meaning the Assistant Directors on set–making sure that our Actors are dressed and ready on time. We also work closely with Directors and Producers in pre-production where we first read and analyze the script, start assembling our ideas, and presenting them.

Depending on your Director you may interact very little or a lot. In either case, you often act as a liaison between a Director and Actor.

It’s very important that you work your way through the script and break it down by character. You need to understand the arc of the character’s journey and you have to understand how many story days there are. You have to understand: Is it day? Is it night? How much time has passed? Is this going to be an action sequence? Is it going to be raining? Do I need to have doubles of the costume? Will they be stuck in that police uniform the entire show? Things like that. They got stabbed and then they continued to survive for another forty pages. What stage of decay has occurred in the costume?

You have to know a lot about continuity and you need to be able to know exactly where you are at all times because when we film, we film out of sequence. It’s not filmed in order. On page thirty-eight, he gets stabbed, but we’re shooting scene seventy-four first. We need to imagine what has happened to the wound on his shirt way back on page 38, which might be one or two hours ago or the next day, depending on your script. You need to be able to analyze that and understand the passage of time and where you are in any given scene, costume-wise.

Costume Designers are really low on the totem pole of salary. This is a very sensitive topic and deserves a reckoning. The union scale for a union film is around $3,000 to $3,500 a week. It varies from television to film, television being slightly lower. But someone like myself is above scale, and that can mean anywhere from $4,000 to $12,000 a week. Very few people make $12,000 a week. I’d just like to say that.

But realistically, after decades of experience, you would probably get up to $7,000 or $8,000 per week. So there’s the union scale, and if you’re getting above scale, it’s probably $4,000 to $5,000 a week. As you build your career, you would get up to $6,000 and $7,000.

There’s a grid that recently came out in a Hollywood trade paper. The Cinematographer is at the top, and the scale for a Cinematographer is $8,000 or $9,000 a week. The scale for a Costume Designer is $3,000 +-. That’s quite a discrepancy. Even the Assistant Prop Person makes more than the Costume Designer’s scale. It has a lot to do with it being a traditionally female position.

The only thing I can say is that those positions are tied to an hourly wage on set and Costume Designers’ rates are typically on a flat rate. Whether you work two hours in a day or twenty-two hours in a day, you get the same amount of money. If you work a sixth day, you get paid time and a half, and if you work a seventh day, you get paid double. If you make $5,000 a week and you work a sixth day, you’ll make $1,500 on that day and $2,000 on Sunday. That’s pretty standard in any union.

That really depends on the person and it depends on the size of whatever projects they care to work on. PAs usually spend a year or two as a PA. They can probably apply to one of the two unions. One is the Costume Design Union (USA 829), and one is the Wardrobe Union (704). Wardrobe is technically a different department but works hand-in-hand with the design team.

Wardrobe doesn’t choose the clothing, but they help take care of it on the set and make sure it’s being worn the way it’s supposed to be worn. If someone rolls up their sleeves and walks through the door, they have to keep those sleeves rolled up. They keep an eye on continuity. If someone spills something on their clothes, they’ll be there to clean it up. If it’s freezing, they’ll make sure that the Actor has a warm coat between takes. Things like that.

From there, Wardrobe people can also go on to supervising the department which includes making and tracking the budget, hiring people, and outfitting costume space. There’s the logistical side, and there’s the design side.

I would say that in California, it’s The Costume Designers Guild (892), and in New York, United Scenic Artists (829). I’m sure there are so many in between. I just know those two. They would consider people after they’ve worked on a couple of movies and have strong references.

In two to three years, you could probably join the union. Probably sooner if you’ve been to school and have a portfolio of drawings and designs. If you go to graduate school in costume design, you could probably join the union based on that and completely side-step the PA path.

There are several paths, but I would certainly start small. If you live anywhere near a film school, you could perhaps design student films and you could learn that way. If you are the Costume Designer, even if it’s low budget, you are THE Costume Designer and you are responsible. You will have credit and no one can take that away from you. You’re not the Assistant or the helper. I really don’t care how little it was, it’s a big deal.

You can be the only person in the department. I have personally done that. It’s just me and I’m the fitter, I’m washing the clothes, I’m sewing on buttons, I’m talking to the Director and meeting with the Actor. It may seem crazy, but when you’re young it’s really fun. Definitely don’t be afraid to start small and have that experience. I realize not everybody can afford to do that because you basically are working for nothing, but it will give you experience.

If you send in your resume to a production and state that you’d like to work as a PA [Production Assistant] in the Costume Department, it will get passed to the Costume Department. If someone in the Costume Department sees that you’ve worked on two student films, that means you have a little bit of knowledge, and that can be enough. I’ve hired all kinds of PAs with all kinds of experience, and they usually come from someone in my department but it can come from elsewhere in production. If you know anyone in any capacity on a film, you can ask them to pass along your resume to the Costume Department. My experience is that people are pretty good about that and will do it.

I’ve heard this theory. “You could have an Instagram of your costumes.” Post a little video, something so you understand where a camera is being placed and what is seen and what is not seen, and there is some character involved that you have to dress. To me, I don’t know that that really speaks to you being able to read character, but if that’s who you are, maybe you’re a fashion person, and it could lead you to work on a fantastical kind of show like Emily in Paris or something where it’s colorful and fashionable. If you’re that kind of person, that might be a good way, creating a visual resume.

I think that a Costume Designer needs a range of skills. I think you should know how to sew, and you should know about pattern making. You do not need to do them well, but you need to understand them. If you want to have a costume built for a film, you need to be able to communicate it to someone who can do it for you.

It’s good if you can sketch, but it’s not absolutely necessary because, if you have the budget, there are Costume Illustrators. Alternatively, you can source a picture elsewhere and say, “This is what I want,” and you can proceed to have it built. It’s like an Architect not understanding how to put support beams in a house. You really need to understand how it’s done. You don’t need to be the one to do it but you need to know and appreciate that particular skill set. It’s the only way you can direct someone.

I also think there are more … emotional skills. Every script is different and every experience you have in this world will enable you to impart something into whatever script you’re designing. If you’re designing a film set in 1985 and your mom was twenty in 1985, maybe your mom has some pictures that she could share with you.

If you’re designing a film about a high school student and you’ve only been out of high school yourself for ten years, you’ll be able to relate very closely because you were just in high school. If you work on a film about a rodeo and you don’t know anything about rodeos, you will need to learn more, and that leads to research skills: knowing what you don’t know and how to find out about it, because really, every single film has something you need to teach yourself.

You may be able to draw upon your experience, but you will definitely have to look up something. The more you are out in the world trying new things and being open to ideas, the better. Visual references, in particular, are very important. Go see lots of movies, lots of plays, or see a dance performance. Go to a museum or go and see some photography. Whatever it is.

If you have a character who’s learning how to play the guitar and you might have some experience with that yourself, you can relate somehow. That’s really, I think, very important: finding something relatable with your characters.

It also requires a lot of focus to work on a script and break it down and know your way around it. You need to know it almost as well as the Director would because you’ll always be in some position where you have to tell an Actor where they are in the story. Remind them that they’ve just had a big fight with their husband and now they’re coming through the door and they’re upset about it. It’s not always clear how that is necessarily reflected in the costume, but it’s important to know, and it’s important to be able to set up the feeling for the Actor.

Knowing how to research and having empathy for characters is very important. Photography is important because you always have to photograph the costumes and send them off for approval. So understanding lighting is very useful; how things appear in some light and how they appear on a set. Which also means you need to know about what color is like on film. Colors shimmer in digital format.

Understand that you will have to know what the set is going to look like and what the Cinematographer is thinking of for a scene. Those are all factors that come into play when you’re choosing a costume. You also have to consider if it makes too much of a scratchy noise for the Sound Department. Certain fabrics are very noisy. Certain fabrics suck up all the light. Certain fabrics will be too bright and too distracting, unless it’s a very intense, colorful kind of show, in which case you get to use color with abandon.

You have to have the ability to change a plan at the last moment. This happens frequently. You may have a decision in your mind that the Actor’s going to wear the teal dress, and then on the day, the Director says, “I think it should be something else.” You really need to have an alternative idea. You may not have to change it. You may say, “No, I don’t think we should change it. Here’s why.” You may be able to defend the choice, but I always keep something in my back pocket just because this happens. It’s not even a bad thing necessarily. It’s just something that occurs. So being flexible and being prepared is key. Often, the last minute changes are for the better.

Diplomacy is very important. You will have to be very diplomatic with a lot of different people from the movie star to the Director to someone helping park the cars. You will have to know your words and way of handling people so that no one is offended. You will be told things and hear things that are very personal and you need to understand that it’s exactly that: personal. I feel it’s very important not to burn a bridge, because over and over again, you’re encountering the same people you encountered a few years ago. If you’re abusive to some young Production Assistant, ten years later, they may be in a position to hire or NOT hire you.

In fact, as young people, the relationships you build will really serve you as you move forward. I do this all the time. I have a young person in the department and they work really hard, and they do a great job, and they want a recommendation letter for a union position or a reference for the next job. I’m very happy to do that because I’ve just spent three months with them and I know how great they are.

Always ask someone if it’s okay to use them as a reference. I check references all the time when I’m hiring people, and I’ve had that experience where a resume had three references on it, and all three people gave a poor review. I thought, “You really need to know what people are going to say about you.”

You could ask, “May I use you as a reference?” If they say, “I’m uncomfortable,” or, “I don’t think you should,” DO NOT use them, because if they are called, they’ll be surprised and the review will not be glowing. I would say most of the time people are happy to do it, but if you ask and they say no, it might be more of an opportunity to wonder why and to think about that yourself. Why does this person not want me to give their name as a reference?

It’s not just your knowledge of clothing and history and film studies. It’s about being all of those things: flexible, diplomatic, and trustworthy.

I was a history and film studies major, but I sewed a lot and made a lot of my clothes. I took a lot of classes in sewing. Then I did an associate degree in fashion design. I could build hats. I could make a pattern. I could do all these things. I could illustrate. All this stuff I was taught. Some of it I was good at, and some of it I wasn’t but it gave me a framework of understanding that is still useful today.

I learned that I didn’t really like the fashion industry, but had never really thought about theater and film and reading scripts. I stumbled into it through a Casting Director who worked at a small off-Broadway theater company in New York. I started doing short one-act plays first. I learned right away how interesting it was to read a script and think about it, watch a rehearsal, see it on a stage, and procure the costumes. There was literally no money, nothing, but it gave me a lot of experience.

My history degree taught me how to research and to think critically about film, scripts, and stories. My film studies provided another key element. Studying the history of film and seeing a lot of classic films will equip you when references are made. Directors frequently mention films that have inspired them. Recently a Director told me he thought the feeling and lighting from Fight Club was something he thought we should reference in our work together.

This is valuable for any category in my opinion, whether you’re a Cinematographer, a Producer, Costume Designer, or Prop Person. If someone makes a reference to Jack Nicholson in The Shining, you should know what they’re talking about. I feel like there are at least 100 films that you should have in your repertoire in your brain just to at least know what someone’s talking about. Maybe you don’t know the shot or maybe you don’t know exactly what they mean, but you should know that Stanley Kubrick was a famous Director and that The Shining was a scary film. I feel like that kind of film study is for everybody, and it’s very helpful, interesting, fun, and ultimately useful.

I know, for example, at FIT in New York, they have an intense costume design class directed towards theater design. I know someone who just took it. She was taught how to assemble a mood board with her references and thoughts, in order to make a presentation to show her way of thinking. This is something that is really, really helpful for your design process: that research and that search for imagery and references, assembling it, presenting it, and talking someone through it. The other thing they teach is script analysis. It all starts with the script so you need to know, as I’ve said several times already, how to go and break each scene down.

You need to know: scene one, story day one, it’s morning, it’s exterior, it’s wintertime, and it’s the northeast. Then the child walks down the driveway and sees the rabbit in the snow. The school bus pulls up and we see her nemesis on board. You need to know the emotional passage of each character. You need to understand act one, act two. You need to know the big steps and you need to know individual scenes, and you really need to know it well.

I have an exercise that I do. I go through the script from the point of view of each character. I go through each scene. If they’re not in the scene, I move on to the next scene and so on. I make a grid for myself. I’ve done it for so long. I used to handwrite it and now I of course have digital formulas for it, but it’s very useful as an exercise to get yourself to learn your script. Script analysis: very important.

Textile studies is also very important. Once you start building costumes and understanding how things look on screen … sourcing them and knowing how they’re made and what the properties of the textiles are. If you have something made, it will look the way you think it will look. This takes a very long time to learn. If you’re a design person, you’ll want to do this: learning about textiles, learning how to sew, and pattern-making.